A recent Democratic presidential candidate debate sponsored by CNN and YouTube gave 10 minutes out of 120 to discuss healthcare. But healthcare is not to be shuffled aside.
Drew Altman, health policy and public opinion expert and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, said at a July 13 briefing that healthcare is a major personal economic concern for most Americans and has been for some time. Recent polls show healthcare is the number one domestic issue, and while distantly behind the War in Iraq as a concern for voters, it is gaining momentum, Altman said.
Almost all candidates, Republican and Democrat, began their campaigns speaking in generalizations about healthcare, but some are now fleshing out ideas for accomplishing what the federal government has not been able to accomplish so far.
The leading Democratic presidential hopefuls all have extensive healthcare plans. America is ready for universal healthcare, according to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) campaign Website. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John Edwards came forward early in their campaigns with talk of universal healthcare coverage.
On August 7, Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.) upped the ante when he unveiled a plan for universal healthcare that actually talks dollars and cents. His plan comes with an expected tab of $104 billion to $110 billion a year, yet it is expected to save the government $110 billion a year. I guess it’s a flat proposition on the books, but worth a whole lot to the nearly 46 million Americans without coverage.
Richardson is also calling for the negotiation of prices of Medicare prescription drugs, a plan already proposed this summer by Reps. Nancy Boyda (D-Kan.) and Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.).
Among the Republican hopefuls, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee are calling for moving Americans from employer-based to individual-based healthcare coverage. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Mitt Romney want to make health insurance more affordable.
Hopefully greater details behind each plan will emerge as the election season rolls forward. Several Web sites are following the healthcare angle of presidential candidates’ platforms, including the Kaiser Family Foundation’s www.health08.org and the excellent blog of Susan Blumenthal, MD, at www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-blumenthal.
The MedTech Publishing Company, publishers of this newspaper and Healthcare IT News, plan to launch a site in October to follow the healthcare platforms of presidential candidates, in addition to those of gubernatorial and Congressional candidates.